Peddling Mueller Misinformation

Q:Has Robert Mueller resigned as the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election?

A:No. He is still in charge of that investigation and has no plans to leave.

FULL ANSWER

Robert S. Mueller III has not resigned as the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. A story claiming otherwise is making the rounds online, but it’s not true.

Facebook users flagged the story as potentially false after it appeared on a website called Freedum Junkshun on Oct. 25.

The byline on the story is Butch Mannington, who is described in his bio on the site as having twice won the Mike Cernovich Award For Excellence in Journalism. But there is no such award, and Mike Cernovich is an alt-right activist who is best known for helping to spread the so-called “pizzagate” conspiracy theory that drove Edgar Maddison Welch to take an AR-15 rifle into the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop in Washington D.C., and fire shots on Dec. 4, 2016.

The bio also says that Mannington was the co-chair for a political action committee called Americans for Trump that raised $250,000 for Trump’s campaign. But Americans for Trump was only just registered as a PAC on Sept. 20, 2017, according to records from the Federal Election Commission. It was registered by a suburban Philadelphia teen.

Freedum Junkshun also has a disclaimer that says it “uses facts that don’t exist and relies more on imagination than the truth. In fact, there is likely no truth at all in what you will read here. All of our articles are basically a crock of doody and should be considered satirical whimsies for today’s aging conservative.”

But none of that kept at least threeothersites from posting the same bogus story.

The headline says, “BREAKING: Robert Mueller Resigns After Clinton And Obama’s Treachery Is Revealed.” The story falsely claimed it would happen “by the end of the week,” citing an anonymous “source at the FBI.”

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office, confirmed to FactCheck.org on Oct. 26 that he has not resigned and has no plans to resign, either.